Daily Meditation: Thursday, June 11, 2009

Jesus said, ‘The Father and I are one,’ and ‘I am the …

06/11/2009

Jesus said, ‘The Father and I are one,’ and ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ and yet he was unable to escape the demands of the physical plane: he experienced hunger, thirst, the need for sleep, and he was vulnerable, as we can see from certain passages in the Gospels where it is mentioned that he had to flee to escape the Pharisees, who wanted to stone him; and, at the end, he felt all the agony and pain of death. Yes, if Jesus is such an example to us, it is because he was made of matter and spirit, just as we are, and because he knew how to reconcile the two. If he was the ‘Son of God’ in the sense that Christians understand it, in other words, God himself incarnate on earth, and not a human being who had become divine through his own effort, it would mean his essence was different from ours. So how could we then take him as a model? But Jesus also said, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’, in order to teach us not to submit to so-called human weakness. And it is up to us now, in our own life, not to confuse the world of matter and the world of the spirit and to accord each its rightful place, all the while giving preponderance to the spirit, to the light.